


what a way to spend the evening

by taiketsuenmi



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Gen, Identity Issues, i'm nervous as heck posting this, memory problems? kinda, nisha isn't the main focus but she's in there, title is bad if i think if something better i'll replace it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 15:46:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10857090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taiketsuenmi/pseuds/taiketsuenmi
Summary: In which Timothy realizes he barely remembers his old face, or his old voice. Then promptly has a panic attack. It's a great time, and by a great time I mean a horrible time.[First time writing for Borderlands or Timothy, I don't know what to call whatever this is. A drabble? Who knows!]





	what a way to spend the evening

**Author's Note:**

> Last night this sorta just. Came into existence. First time writing Timothy or anything Borderlands related but I'm definitely feeling like there's a lot to write here, especially with Timothy. Really under-explored in canon, and it's a darn shame. 
> 
> This is based off some of my own experiences as someone with really bad anxiety, who has pretty frequent anxiety attacks. It sucks, that's my general summary.
> 
> As we speak I am nervously putting off posting this. The irony isn't lost on me, honestly.

His name is Timothy. But nobody ever calls him that anymore. Hell, legally there wasn’t even Timothy, but he sticks to it like glue.Timothy Lawrence. Even if every speck of evidence of his existence vanishes (and it might as well have by this point) nobody can take that from him.

That’s what he tells himself.

Then, one day, he’s asked what he looked like. It’s Nisha who asks the question, intoxicated but pushy as ever, minus the violence. She’s prattling on, digging at him, poking fun, the usual Nisha thing, she's a little tipsy, too. He’s only half paying attention anyways. Plus, he’s sober as the day he was born, can’t drink with the medication he takes. Not that he was much of a drinker to start with. So listening to her drunken shit talk isn’t on his top list of favorite things to do (why had he agreed to do this when he knew he couldn’t drink, anyways?).

He finds he doesn’t know how to answer that question right away. As he digs through his memories he finds it’s hard to recall. Anxiety slowly starts to pool in his stomach as she stares at him, oblivious to the tensing of his shoulders, amber eyes piercing and expectant. Good god, even after all this time, Nisha was an intimidating person. Actually, maybe knowing her only made it worse. She clicks her nails against the side of her glass, and he leans back into the seat as she leans forwards. Not nearly as fierce as her usual intimidation tactics, but he knew Nisha well enough to know even drunk she was scary as hell when she wanted to be. And she didn’t have to do much to actually intimidate Timothy.

As he clears his throat he resists the urge to wince as the sharp pain sparks within his throat, lodged deep in his vocal chords.

"So?" She speaks, still expectant, and Timothy tries to relax himself a bit.

Trying to imagine what he’d looked like before the dubious deal to pay off those damned student loans had been presented before him proves harder than he expected, and it only makes the anxiety worse. He suddenly wishes Athena were there— she seemed to be the one who would always swoop in during moments like these, but he knows she’s already off Elpis with Janey.

Probably. Hopefully. He brushes the thought off as quickly as it came. Nisha is still expecting him to say something but he’s drawing a blank.

He and Jack had already looked similar in some respects, he knew that. Same height, roughly the same stature (but how you hold yourself makes all the difference, from what he’s learned). He…had brown hair, he thinks. Was it lighter or darker than Jack’s? Lighter, he was fairly sure it’d been lighter. He’d had..brown eyes. No, hazel?

Freckles, he knew he had had freckles. That stands out to him, somehow, amidst the uncertainty of the other details, or lack thereof.

The glass smacks against the table pulling him from roughly from his thoughts and he jumps in his seat, Nisha slowly takes a long sip from her drink and stares him down while he stares back at her, the long moment draws out for what feels like too long before she lets out one of her laughs. “Not like it matters, but I reckon you were a total wimp. Sounded like one.”

He stares at her bewildered, an eyebrow raised. Now rather than startled, he seems confused. He is confused, actually. He’s not sure if she continues because he’s silently questioning her, or because she’s feeling particularly mouthy and trying to get a reaction out of the body double.

He supposes later that it didn’t real matter.

“Jack had some old ECHOes of ya, sounded like a total dweeb, if I didn’t know you I’d say you just hit puberty. Real late. Like some nerd or somethin’ who got shoved into lockers at school.” She lets out a soft, smooth chuckle as she takes another sip from her drink, eyeing him up and down once. “Definite improvement.”

But Timothy’s gaze has drifted to the table they’re seated at. The anxiety from before was bubbling into something more potent and he can’t place why, it’s rising from his stomach to his chest and he runs a hand through his hair.

It doesn’t surprise him Jack has ECHOs of him, Jack has some weird quirks that leave the impression that he’s pretty damn paranoid (Timothy still doesn’t appreciate this, it’s creepy as hell). But something is bothering him. Tim’s doing his damnedest to figure it out, raking his thoughts through trying to figure out what the hell is making him feel this uneasy. But when it hits him, it hits him hard, and he feels like he’s just been hit by a goddamn moon buggy.  


When he tries to recall the voice Nisha is currently mocking, he can’t place it.

What the hell did he sound like before this?

The anxiety swells to outright panic, volatile as it goes from his chest right up into his throat. He stands up suddenly, the sound of the chair’s legs squeaking in protest to the sudden gesture causing Nisha to raise an eyebrow at him, he barely catches it as his mind suddenly begins racing. Too fast, but not fast enough for the panic to start eating him alive from the inside out.

It happens too fast for him to even try to reel himself back in from the panic and the realization that he can’t even remember.  
Already he’ digging through memories trying to recall something of his old face or voice, but aside from the vaguest of details, nothing comes fourth. That only makes the panic worse, and the panic made trying to recall things worse. A vicious cycle that quickly started to repeat itself over and over again in his head.

  
Is it Jack who’s afraid of heights? Timothy who who’s favorite color is yellow? Timothy likes cats, doesn’t he? Or is it Jack? Which one had a cat? Did they both?

He’s in no state to be the judge of that, but he tries regardless, and the results are disastrous. He finds the answers are harder and harder to grasp until he’s really not sure who is who and what is what.

If Nisha speaks, he doesn’t hear her, if she tries to stop him as his body goes on autopilot, he doesn’t register it. He’s not even aware of the fact that he’s left, his thoughts are swimming in front of his eyes and he’s not sure if they’re Jack’s or Timothy’s or both.

He doesn’t notice the few passerby of the mostly empty halls of Helios as he strides on by, moving on it’s own as his brain is tearing itself, and him, apart on the inside. God, this was not how he’d expected an invite to drinking with Nisha was going to end. With a goddamn mental breakdown.  
He’d hear about it tomorrow from a pissed off Handsome Jack, who would catch wind of his now not quite so perfect body double (but still his goddamn body double) tearing his way through the space station while having a panic attack and damn near hyperventilating.

_‘I have an image to maintain, I don’t pay you to have mental breakdowns in front of my workers cupcake, that just won’t do.’_

None of that was going through his head right now.

What was going through his head was incoherent, scattered questions and thoughts as he clawed at his scalp as if that would clear his mind, give him some holy revelation, or hell, even just some relief from the horrible panic he was experiencing.  
By the time he finally stumbles into his suite his legs are shaking from bolting across Helios and the panic and they quickly give out on him as soon as the door shuts behind him.

It had only been a few months but he couldn’t even remember his own voice, his own face.

He has to do this for twenty years. 

Timothy had made a lot of dumb mistakes in his life, but right now, with a crushing realization, this was perhaps the worst one he could have ever made. By the end of this, what kind of state was he going to be in? Not as Jack, but as Timothy?

( _‘That is, if you survive these twenty years’_ His brain would have added, at any other time. _‘You’re the body double of a murderous CEO now, not just some self absorbed programmer.’_ )

The hands tangled in his hair tug one last time before running along his face. It’s wet with tears, and he’s familiar enough with these panic attacks to not be particularly surprised (college is a lot of things, if not a good way to start crying your eyes out). The panic is subsiding back into anxiety as he sits there, covering his face as he inhales and exhales shakily through his hands.

He tries to ignore how oddly sharp his features feel beneath his hands, somehow feeling alien and unfamiliar, which strikes even harder when his old face is a hazy memory. It makes him feel sick to his stomach.

He’s unsure of how long he sits there, but he feels sick to his stomach the whole damn time and his throat is tight (and it hurts like hell to boot, goddamn voice modulator). When he moves for the first time it’s only to hug his knees to his chest, nails digging into his shins.

And his brain won’t stop racing, now to the most horrible conclusions of what will happen if he makes it out of these twenty years. Every time , the anxiety would spike back up into panic before he bit it back down, grounding himself by digging his nails into his legs harder. And this continues for a while, he’s not sure how long, and he doesn’t care. It would have been minutes or hours, but it was too damn long.

When it finally ebbs to something controllable, he’s exhausted. Emotionally and physically. His body feels heavy, like a bag of rocks. And his head feels like it’s filled with cotton, his eyes feel fuzzy and his hearing is muffled. But he eventually drags himself to his feet with some effort, dragging his unbalanced body past the entry way, the kitchen and finally into the bedroom. Tossing himself onto his bed, face first, the bed groans in protest. He doesn’t even bother to take off his boots for several long seconds before prying them off with his feet, still face first in the bed, and lazily kicking them as they dangled from his ankles. He hears them hit the floor with a dull thud and curls up in on himself.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't come up with an ending that saw satisfying to me and it makes me sad, but if I tried to keep going I'd lose focus of what I was writing about and end up with a 7000 word mess.
> 
> Some headcanons are in there, one being Jack has Paranoia and the other being some physical similarities with Jack and Timothy before the surgery. Because the more alike they look the less surgery they'd have to do (they still had to do a lot of surgery).
> 
> Uhhh, yeah! Shoutout to nyatsuma for encouraging me to post this. You're the worst and I love you<3


End file.
